PUBLISHED: May 10, 2026 at 5:00 AM PDT | UPDATED: May 10, 2026 at 8:13 AM PDT

During a recent encampment sweep on National Avenue, Michael Lindsay relocates his tent to the other side of the street. The city conducts daily encampment abatements for public health and safety. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

It’s a warm April day, bordering on hot, with the midday sun overhead. Still, Savannah Flores stays beneath a black tarp she has fashioned into a tent. If she tries to climb out, she says, it might collapse. So she agrees to talk through a small hole in the plastic.

Two or three days a week, she says, city crews sweep through this half-block stretch of 17th Street. The roughly two dozen people who usually camp there get 24 hours’ notice to pack up.

Flores, 35, has been homeless for about a year. Whenever police come to clear out the area, she goes around the corner and returns later.

“They come and they treat us pretty much like we’re part of the trash,” she says. “They tell us to disappear somewhere, to be invisible.”

Valeria Burton, 66, who camps a few blocks away, moves her things across the street when crews show up. With the swelling in her feet, it’s the farthest she can go.

It’s been nearly three years since the San Diego City Council narrowly passed its Unsafe Camping Ordinance, which bans overnight camping on public property when a shelter bed is available and sets rules for how the city can enforce and abate encampments.

The city has carried out more than 16,000 encampment abatements in the nearly three years since the law took effect.

During that time, the city’s unsheltered population fell slightly, by less than 5%. The median monthly count of homeless people living downtown had fallen by half two years after the ordinance as hundreds of people moved into city-run secure sleeping sites. Now fewer are being counted as living in public areas.

Proponents hail these trends as signs the ordinance is a success.

“Our investment in shelters and safe sleeping is reducing homeless encampments, and that benefits us all,” said Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, the architect of the ordinance, in a statement this month. “Of course, there are still too many people on the streets, and we must keep investing so we can reduce encampments in public spaces even more.”

But an analysis of city data requested by The San Diego Union-Tribune shows a more complicated picture of what the city’s homeless encampment sweeps actually accomplish.

Jason Borja removes what he can from his encampment near the state Route 94 westbound freeway during a recent abatement of encampments. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Encampments often reappear days — sometimes hours — after they’re cleared. In East Village, at K and 16th streets, the city cleared encampments at least 107 times in 2025, the Union-Tribune analysis found.

Just down the block at 200 17th Street — near the Neil Good Day Center, where Flores camps to be near services the center provides — crews returned at least 98 times.

And at 8th Avenue and E Street, crews came by 83 times to abate encampments.

The strategy is costing city taxpayers millions.

In fiscal 2025, the city spent more than $7 million on encampment sweeps, up from $6.4 million the year before.

That figure doesn’t include staffing costs for any of the hours police spend supervising each sweep, most of them overtime, said San Diego police Capt. Stephen Shebloski, who oversees the department’s Neighborhood Policing Division.

City officials say the sweeps are driven by complaints and by where they know encampments tend to recur. Crews return over and over to some of the same locations — especially downtown — where trash, human waste and drug paraphernalia can accumulate quickly.

“We know if we don’t go there … you’re in feces, needles, all that for days,” said Franklin Coopersmith, deputy director of the city’s Environmental Services Department. “That’s when you start getting the transmission of diseases.”

During a recent encampment abatement on F Street downtown, one man dragged his tent to the other side of the street. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

That’s happened in San Diego before.

A 2017 outbreak of hepatitis A killed 20 people, most of them homeless, and sickened hundreds more; officials later found better sanitation measures could have slowed the spread. And in 2021, an outbreak of Shigella virus infected 53 people, all homeless. Like hep A, Shigella is spread through poor sanitation.

The sweeps help the city address some of the tens of thousands of complaints filed by members of the public each year. After the ordinance took effect, new Get It Done reports of encampments fell from 66,000 in 2023 to 40,000 in 2025.

At the same time, police and outreach workers are redoubling their efforts to move people from encampments to shelter. Referrals have more than doubled in recent years, while people are accepting help more often from police, a recent city audit found.

But for all the sweeps and outreach, any effort to curb street homelessness is hampered by one fundamental fact: The city does not have enough shelter beds or affordable housing.

Only one of nine referrals made in fiscal 2025 resulted in a shelter placement, the audit found. City shelters and safe sleeping sites are also increasingly full, with average occupancy rising from 77% in 2022 to 95% in 2025.

Meanwhile, enforcement continues. Police issued 1,605 citations and made 391 arrests for encampment-related violations in 2025, compared with 1,674 citations and 196 arrests in 2023, according to auditors.

Officers are supposed to tell people they can’t stay in encampments, but when there’s no shelter available, there’s no clear answer for where people should go, Shebloski acknowledges.

“That’s where it’s just kind of an open-ended thing,” he said. “I think it’s a little cold to say, ‘Hey, just get out of here, go somewhere else.’ That’s not what we’re saying. But what we are saying is, ‘You can’t set up an encampment here in front of this particular location.’”

City crews collect trash and debris on National Avenue during an encampment abatement. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Critics say that without enough shelter or housing, sweeps do little more than move people from block to block.

“They do nothing to address homelessness,” said Claire Herbert, a sociology professor at the University of Oregon. “(Encampments) are just going to show up somewhere else because the root cause has not been addressed.”

But even if people return, Coopersmith and Shebloski said, regular cleanups are needed to prevent encampment conditions from becoming out-of-control or dangerous with things like bonfires, drug use or vermin attracted by food from donated meals.

“We proactively go in the areas that we know will become an encampment right after we leave, or a day or two,” Coopersmith said. “We know if we don’t go into those places regularly … then we can have something worse happen.”

He recalls one time last year when his crews paused abatements on 17th Street for one week so teams could do intensive homeless outreach.

“I have never seen that area look so destroyed, and we have never gotten so many complaints in our lives for just one single week of not doing it,” Coopersmith said.

Before the city clears an encampment, workers post notices giving people 24 hours to leave. On the day of the sweep, police officers accompany cleanup crews to provide security, Coopersmith said, and to help connect people to services.

During one abatement last month at National Avenue and Commercial Street, where encampments are swept twice a week, two officers told people they needed to move while city crews swept up debris.

Manolo Di Pradonelli, 57, watched from his encampment on a private lot along National Avenue as a city crew collected trash and debris from nearby sidewalks during a sweep. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Workers with Urban Corps, which the city hires to conduct abatements, shoveled whatever remained — flattened cardboard, window blinds, trading cards, food containers, piles of clothes and a bag of human waste — into bins and dumped them into a garbage truck. Last year, crews disposed of 4,000 tons of material from encampments, the city’s monthly reports show.

Coopersmith said people living in encampments often intentionally leave behind things they no longer want. But some people have lost precious belongings to sweeps, setting them further back on a path out of homelessness.

Marine veteran Manolo Di Pradonelli, who has been homeless for 10 years, said he has lost everything he owned in past sweeps, including his tent, money, clothes and his grandfather’s jewelry. “You just threw away and destroyed everything I own,” he said.

Crews search for and set aside some of what’s swept up — things that can’t be easily replaced, or whose owners can be identified, Coopersmith said. Records show they have recovered medications, ID cards, bicycles, a wheelchair, a camcorder and a PlayStation 4.

But most of what is impounded is never claimed.

After crews finish collecting and sweeping debris, another crew sprays the sidewalk with disinfectant to prevent the spread of diseases.

Homeless outreach workers don’t accompany workers on encampment sweeps — the goal is to avoid having them associated with enforcement, city spokesperson Matt Hoffman said.

Near the corner of 16th and J Street downtown, Sgt. Christopher Smith (right) and his team walk up to an encampment to inform people of a scheduled abatement. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

But some outreach workers have said they want to be kept more informed about sweeps so they can better help connect people before their encampments are cleared.

“Coordinating with local governments, police, environmental services and other providers before abatements occur is both effective and efficient,” said Tyler Renner, spokesperson for the nonprofit People Assisting the Homeless, or PATH.

“We have found that at least 72 hours’ notice, and ideally up to a week, leads to better outcomes, as it gives outreach teams the time to connect people to appropriate services and shelter,” he added. “When dedicated shelter beds are available for a specific encampment and immediate placement is offered, people accept the options at much higher rates.”

In routine policing outside of sweeps, Shebloski said officers often get to know people by name, make repeated contacts and assess their needs tied to mental health, substance use or housing. Officers are expected to “get out of their cars and talk to people,” he said, evaluating each situation in real time.

But when it comes to abatements, officials offered few details on whether they keep track of their encounters, the services people in encampments need, why encampments reappear or whether sweeps are helping people move into shelter or housing.

People hold signs in opposition to San Diego's encampment ban ahead of a vote by the San Diego City Council on Tuesday, June 13, 2023. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune) — People hold signs in opposition to San Diego’s encampment ban ahead of a vote by the San Diego City Council on Tuesday, June 13, 2023. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who opposed the city’s encampment ban, said that gap in information is significant.

“If all you’re doing is moving people out of the space that they are in, you’re missing that opportunity to collect that information,” he said.

In some cases, the city has used state funding to conduct intensive outreach before clearing encampments.

In 2024, with the help of a $3.6 million state grant, city workers spent four months working with people living along the San Diego River, offering case management and resources ahead of a cleanup. Forty-eight people moved into shelters or city-run sleeping sites and eight into longer-term housing.

Jason Borja pulls out the notice of an encampment sweep that the city posted where he camps near the state Route 94 westbound freeway. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

But this kind of intensive outreach can’t be done if the city provides only a 24-hour notice, said Herbert, the sociology professor.

She said research shows people are more likely to accept services when outreach is coordinated in advance and when shelter is immediately available — particularly non-congregate options.

“It’s not a preference for being outside,” Herbert said. “It’s that moving inside is not meeting their needs.”

As crews cleaned up the block at National and Commercial last month, residents folded tarps, packed bags of belongings and dragged their tents across the street to a sidewalk that was not being cleared.

They joined about two dozen homeless neighbors living in an encampment established on an unfenced lot.

Because it’s private property, the city can’t enforce its ban there.

Sitting on a private commercial lot, Manolo Di Pradonelli, 57, watched from his encampment as a city crew collects trash and debris from sidewalks. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Home

What happens after a homeless encampment sweep? City data shows the limits of what San Diego’s strategy accomplishes